THe ancient example of Jeremiah is still with us. The elite do not want to listen: the elite will not listen. They want their safe spaces, they do not want to he challenged: they want the right to protest but protest greatly if anyone protests about them, calling it harassment and bringing the force of the state to bear.
For they see the secular as sacred, and dissent as blasphemy.
Readers will recall that the Catholic Herald’s Tim Stanley was prevented from speaking at an Oxford debate on the subject “This House Believes Britain’s Abortion Culture Hurts Us All”. Again, the argument was that it would somehow harm the students’ safety to listen to someone with a different point of view.
Tim, however, is something of an exception, for the interesting thing about no-platforming is that most of the people barred are women, and most of them are on the Left. The former is an interesting question but for another time, but the latter is most likely because conservatism is an irrelevancy. Trans activists forcing Bindel out of a debate is the equivalent of the Jacobins turning on the Girondins after the revolution has been won; as for today’s conservatives, they’re in a coffee shop in London hanging out with Le Comte de Frou Frou. No one no-platforms them – except when an ultra-personal issue like abortion is involved – because no one cares what we think.
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Many very decent people on the British Left are opposed to no-platforming, hate speech legislation or other forms of censorship, and I salute them for that. What they might not consider, though, is that it should be not just about letting conservatives have their time on the microphone, but about taking conservative ideas seriously. The most important point, I think, of Haidt’s findings is that non-liberal theories in the social sciences have been purposefully ignored for political reasons, and this produces skewed results or perceptions
This may be why the Left love those of Islam and want to let them in. They see them as also having a total system that is opposed to the Church and tradition, and deliberately do not see that those of their political, sexual, or religious orientation are rotting on crosses where Shari’a rules.
Instead they want us all to be blind, dumb, and silent. Those who dissent have to run: their books must be burned, and no person may have the change to repent.
When Micaiah the son of Gemariah, son of Shaphan, heard all the words of the LORD from the scroll, he went down to the king’s house, into the secretary’s chamber, and all the officials were sitting there: Elishama the secretary, Delaiah the son of Shemaiah, Elnathan the son of Achbor, Gemariah the son of Shaphan, Zedekiah the son of Hananiah, and all the officials. And Micaiah told them all the words that he had heard, when Baruch read the scroll in the hearing of the people. Then all the officials sent Jehudi the son of Nethaniah, son of Shelemiah, son of Cushi, to say to Baruch, “Take in your hand the scroll that you read in the hearing of the people, and come.” So Baruch the son of Neriah took the scroll in his hand and came to them. And they said to him, “Sit down and read it.” So Baruch read it to them. When they heard all the words, they turned one to another in fear. And they said to Baruch, “We must report all these words to the king.” Then they asked Baruch, “Tell us, please, how did you write all these words? Was it at his dictation?” Baruch answered them, “He dictated all these words to me, while I wrote them with ink on the scroll.” Then the officials said to Baruch, “Go and hide, you and Jeremiah, and let no one know where you are.”
So they went into the court to the king, having put the scroll in the chamber of Elishama the secretary, and they reported all the words to the king. Then the king sent Jehudi to get the scroll, and he took it from the chamber of Elishama the secretary. And Jehudi read it to the king and all the officials who stood beside the king. It was the ninth month, and the king was sitting in the winter house, and there was a fire burning in the fire pot before him. As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a knife and throw them into the fire in the fire pot, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the fire pot. Yet neither the king nor any of his servants who heard all these words was afraid, nor did they tear their garments. Even when Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them. And the king commanded Jerahmeel the king’s son and Seraiah the son of Azriel and Shelemiah the son of Abdeel to seize Baruch the secretary and Jeremiah the prophet, but the LORD hid them.
The secular forces are afraid of any dissent, regardless of who says it, because they have decided that cowardice is a virtue. Although they will not confront themselves, they will order the courts, the police and the army to do so. And disavow that this is by their commands.
Last week newspapers reported that the student union at Britain’s University of Warwick had banned Maryam Namazie, a secular human-rights activist, from speaking on the campus this month.
The reasoning was simple. Namazie, an Iranian-born former Muslim, routinely challenges radical Islamist beliefs and criticizes many aspects of Islam. That was determined to violate the student union’s policy, which forbids external speakers to spread “hatred and intolerance in the community” and says they “must seek to avoid insulting other faiths or groups.” Namazie’s critical views, the student union concluded, could infringe upon the “right of Muslim students not to feel intimidated or discriminated against on their university campus.”
When I teach introductory courses in religion, I find my students are also unwilling to offer critical appraisals of religious beliefs, and for the same reason. Like Warwick’s student union, they think refraining from criticism is essential to religious tolerance. After all, if you claim that a religious belief is wrong, aren’t you being intolerant? Better to accept religious relativism than run the risk of bigotry.
That approach is fundamentally misguided. You can think a religious belief is wrong without being intolerant. Tolerance is not synonymous with “believing someone else is right.” It is a virtue that allows you to coexist with people whose way of life is different from your own without throwing a temper tantrum, or a punch.
One wonders how fragile the beliefs of the left are. Have they never been challenged? Have they no Catholic or Calvinist friends? Have they never heard the law preached, nor the gospel? Have they not lost, grieved, been defeated, and had to start again?
Have they not lived?
We know keeping children wrapped in cotton wool, without the ability to take risks and deal with them, is bad for the child. It seems we are not satisfied with destroying childhood in case a child loses at something, and are now shrouding the academy with padding. In every room.
Which would make any man leave, for a young man should chase risk, and try to grasp something greater than he can easily obtain. For the wisdom those of us with gray hairs have comes as much from our bodily scars and defeats as any triumph.
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